I am not sure about whether this is a wallowing around thread or not (I can do that with the best of them!), but this is the saddest/hardest poem I know. I used to use it as an audition piece, but had to give it up, because I could never get all the way through it without breaking down. It is from Ariel Dorfman's poem, Missing, about the people who were taken away during Pinochet's rule in Chile.

my son has been
missing
since May 8
of last year.

They took him
just for a few hourse
they said
just for some routine
questioning.

After the car left,
the car with no licence plate,
we couldn't
find out
anything else about him.

But now things have changed.
We have heard from a companero
who just got out
that five months later
they were torturing him
in Villa Grimaldi.
He says he recognised
his voice
his screams
he says.

Somebody tell me
what times are these
what kind of world
what country?
What I am asking is
how can it be
that a father's
joy
is knowing
that they
that they are still
torturing my son?
Which means that he was alive
five months after he
disappeared
and that my greatest
hope
can only be to find out
next year
that they are still
torturing him
and so he is still
maybe
maybe
alive.


yours, Peter T.